Letters: Congressman not clearheaded on climate change

AP FILE PHOTOIn this Aug. 27, 2011, file photo, one of two people rescued from a sailboat, right, uses a line to make their way onto the beach on Willoughby Spit in Norfolk, Va. Nature pummeled the United States in 2011 with extremes. Some say this is because of man-made pollution, which has led to global warming.

With Earth Day still in memory, it’s appropriate to ask what our Congressman, Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, is doing about climate change.

Huizenga wrote on his campaign website, “Today’s global warming doomsayers simply lack the scientific evidence to support their claims. A host of leaders in the scientific community have recognized that the argument for drastic anthropogenic global warming is no longer based on science, but is being driven by irrational fanaticism. Clearheadedness and a moderate temperament are the best antidotes to this kind of rhetoric.”

Our representative could not be more misinformed. The same year Huizenga was making his statement, the National Academy of Science, a group founded by Abraham Lincoln and whose membership includes 200 Nobel Prize recipients, found that “97–98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field” agree that the world is warming and humans are a significant contributor to this problem (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (27): 12107–9).

Therefore, Huizenga’s statement completely misrepresents the facts. What he should have said is that despite the preponderance of scientific research opposing my opinion, I choose to agree with the tiny minority who say that climate change is a hoax. Furthermore, I will consistently vote against those who understand the facts and keep them from passing important legislation that could save the future for our children.

I don’t know what motivates our representative’s decision to oppose climate change but clearly it is not clearheadedness. His views are 180 degrees from the vast majority of people who actually study climate. I hope that Huizenga knows that a decision based on facts will better represent his constituents than one based on fiction.